Articles
- International Migration
as a Tool in Development Policy: A Passing Phase? / Ronald Skeldon
This essay examines the recent emergence of migration and development as
a major area of policy concern. The focus up to now has been almost
entirely upon international migration, which accounts for the minority
of people who move. A consensus has emerged that migration can be
managed so as to promote development, and the essay critically assesses
three of the major areas of concern: remittances, skilled migration, and
the diaspora. While welcoming the growing acceptance that migration is
no longer seen as negative for development, the essay cautions against
essentializing migration and placing too great a responsibility upon
migrant agency at the expense of the institutional change necessary to
bring about development. Internal as well as international migrations
will need to be integrated into any development framework, and it is
further argued that these migrations are essentially a consequence of
development. Planning for migration as an outcome rather than a cause of
development is likely to provide a more balanced policy approach. [34,
no. 1 (Mar 08): 1–18] (offsite
link*)
- Variations in Kinship
Networks Across Geographic and Social Space / Michael Murphy
This article analyzes variations in interaction with non-coresident
adult kin based on comparable cross-national surveys conducted in 2001
in 27 countries. The two main dimensions of kin contact are considered:
(1) overall levels and (2) the relative emphasis given to contacts with
primary kin (parents, adult children, siblings) and secondary kin
(aunts, cousins, in-laws). Age-adjusted variations in kin contact
between countries are much greater than those within countries. These
results do not confirm the commonly hypothesized existence of
well-defined family system boundaries in Europe arising from historical
factors. The similarity of patterns of countries outside Europe with
European countries with which they have historical ties suggests
cultural factors are important in explaining interaction with kin,
whereas welfare regimes appear to have little explanatory value. Within
Europe, kin contact levels are more strongly related to a north/south
divide than to indicators of economic development or religiosity. The
findings suggest that neither of the extreme assumptions—homogenizing
pressures toward a nuclear family model or persistent well-defined
groupings arising from historical contexts—can be substantiated. Rather,
there is a continuum in family behaviors over a substantial range,
related to a number of explanatory factors. [34, no. 1 (Mar 08): 19–49 (offsite
link*)
- Childless or Childfree?
Paths to Voluntary Childlessness in Italy / Maria Letizia Tanturri,
Letizia Mencarini
This article investigates childlessness in Italy. Trends in
childlessness are presented and compared with trends elsewhere in
Europe. Different paths to childlessness are outlined, using data from a
survey carried out among childless women aged 40–44 in five Italian
cities in 2002. Individual characteristics of the childless and reasons
for childlessness are investigated. As many as one-third of the
interviewees who live with a partner and do not suffer from any physical
impediment are voluntarily childless. These women, in contrast to
mothers, appear to be less religious and to have partners who are less
religious; they tend to come from smaller families; to have been in a
nonmarital cohabitation at least once in life; to have entered their
first union later; and to have had, in the initial period of their
union, temporary work and flexible work schedules and limited leisure
time. In other cases, childlessness is the unintended outcome of a
decision to delay having a child or the result of adverse external
circumstances, particularly dissolution of partnership. [34, no. 1 (Mar
08): 51–77] (offsite
link*)
- The Contribution of
Assisted Reproduction to Completed Fertility: An Analysis of Danish Data
/ Tomáš Sobotka, Martin A. Hansen, Tina Kold Jensen, Anette Tønnes
Pedersen, Wolfgang Lutz, Niels Erik Skakkebæk
Assisted reproduction
has a minor but increasing influence on childbearing trends in advanced
societies. In Denmark, the use of assisted reproduction technology (ART)
has become particularly widespread. At the same time, Danish women born
in the late 1950s and the 1960s experienced stabilization or even a
slight increase in their mean number of children. Broad availability and
widespread use of assisted reproduction may become important factors
contributing to maintaining relatively high completed fertility among
the younger cohorts of Danish women. To explore this idea, we analyze
and project cohort trends in fertility rates among native Danish women
born in 1960–78 and examine the likely contribution of assisted
reproduction to these trends. The projected proportion of children born
after ART treatment shows a substantial increase from 2.1 percent among
women born in 1965 to 4–5 percent among women born in 1978, with an
estimated net impact of ART (as compared with the hypothetical situation
where no ART treatment was available) on the order of 3–4 percent. When
intrauterine inseminations are included, this implies that up to 7
percent of children of those native Danish women born in 1975 and later
will likely be conceived by infertility treatment. [34, no. 1 (Mar 08):
79–101] (offsite
link*)
Notes and
Commentary
- Demography and
Policy: A View from Outside the Discipline / Paul R. Ehrlich
Scientists, individually and through their national academies, have
often pointed to the major role of population growth in damaging
humanity’s life-support systems, emphasizing the overriding need for
population stabilization. Demography and its practitioners, however,
in focusing on technical analyses of population change and its
components, have largely neglected these critical issues. Where they
have taken an interest in population–environment relationships,
their voices have been little heard in public debate and have had
scant political impact. Demographers should promote their expertise
more aggressively, in particular through a new environmental
demography, modeled perhaps on environmental economics. This should
be a collaborative enterprise with ecologists and other
environmental scientists, concerned with issues of carrying
capacity, encouraging and planning for future population reduction,
and researching population policies that are humane and accord due
attention to environmental sustainability. [34, no. 1 (Mar 08):
103–113] (offsite
link*)
Data and Perspectives
-
A Profile of the World’s Young Developing
Country International Migrants / David J. McKenzie
Individual-level census and household survey data are used to present a
rich profile of young developing country international migrants
around the world. They are found to comprise a large share of the
flow of migrants, particularly among migrants to other developing
countries, with the age distribution of migrants peaking in the late
teens or early twenties. Detailed data are presented on the age and
sex composition of migrants, on whether young migrants move alone or
with a parent or spouse, on their participation in schooling and
work in the destination country, on the types of jobs they have, and
on the incidence and age of return migration. The results suggest a
high degree of commonality in the youth immigrant experience across
a number of destination countries. Recent developing country young
migrants tend to work in similar occupations and are more
concentrated in these occupations than recent older migrants or
young immigrants who arrived at an earlier age. Nevertheless, there
is also considerable heterogeneity among young immigrants with
respect to school attendance and work in their destination country.
The potential of international migration for building human capital
is significant but far from being fully used. [34, no. 1 (Mar 08):
115–135] (offsite
link*)
-
European Demographic Forecasts Have Not Become
More Accurate Over the Past 25 Years / Nico Keilman
Nowadays, demographers, population statisticians, and population
forecasters have richer data, more refined theories of demographic
behavior, and more sophisticated methods of analysis than they had
two or three decades ago. This scientific progress should have made
it easier to predict demographic behavior. But analyses of the
errors in older forecasts show that demographic forecasts published
by statistical agencies in 14 European countries have not become
more accurate over the past 25 years. The findings demonstrate that
scientific progress in population studies during the previous two to
three decades has not kept up with the trend toward less predictable
demographic behavior of populations in European countries. There is
no reason to be more optimistic about US Census Bureau forecasts.
Population forecasts are intrinsically uncertain, hence should be
couched in probabilistic terms. [34, no. 1 (Mar 08): 137–153] (offsite
link*)
Archives
(offsite
link*)
- Ronald
Freedman on American Population Growth: A View from 1957
Half a century ago, in 1957, the American baby boom reached its
peak. The period total fertility rate (TFR) had climbed to 3.76—a
level wholly unexpected even in the immediate postwar years. In
combination with the then prevailing pattern of early childbearing
and already fairly low mortality, this yielded an intrinsic rate of
natural increase slightly above 2 percent per year. Such a rate
implied, even without immigration, a long-run population growth
potential unprecedented in US history. How should this demographic
upsurge be interpreted? And what was the likely future demographic
course of the United States? These were questions of manifest public
interest. From the vantage point of the crest of the baby boom,
Ronald Freedman addressed them in an essay titled “The planned
family and American population growth,” which appeared in the March
1957 issue of The Antioch Review. At the time Freedman was
already a well-known social demographer, director of the first
national fertility survey in the US (Growth of American Families);
he was to become a leader in worldwide research on fertility and
family planning. His 1957 essay is reproduced below in full. Written
in nontechnical language but reflecting the best understanding of
the factors underlying US fertility trends, Freedman’s commentary
provides a compelling narrative for today’s readers.
Freedman notes that in low-mortality conditions, like those in the
United States, changes in the rate of growth of population result
mainly from variations in the birth rate. Those variations reflect
the choices families make about the number of children to have and
the timing of those births over the reproductive life span. He links
that freedom of choice to contraceptive practice: “The transition to
planned families began in the last century with the diffusion of
methods of birth control.” But the causal connection is left
vague—it could also be argued that the diffusion of methods of birth
control began with the transition to planned families; that it was
the increasing use of contraception that “coincided” with a marked
decline of the birth rate. Indeed, the dominant element of choice—as
shaped by personal preferences and societal pressures—in setting the
birth rate is suggested by the fact that the level of American
fertility in the mid-1950s was nearly twice as high as the level
prevailing in the Depression years. As Freedman remarks, “more
widespread use of contraception does not necessarily mean a
continuing trend to smaller families.” And birth rates may be
expected to change “rather rapidly in response to economic and
social conditions.” The 1950s did see the long-run trend to smaller
families arrested and even reversed, but Freedman adds the crucial
qualification: “at least temporarily.” Timing of births by families
might mean that births could be “borrowed from the future.”
(Freedman’s later espousal of family planning programs as a major
device for reducing fertility, based on his survey research in
Taiwan and other developing countries, tended to position him on one
side of the controversy surrounding the efficacy of those programs;
however, his view of fertility determinants left a large place for
socioeconomic and cultural factors.)
Changes in the birth rate, Freedman points out, give rise to
“bulges” in the age structure. As the baby-boom cohorts age, these
bulges will create “new problems (and opportunities)”—initially for
schools, subsequently for the labor force. Changes in fertility
differentials are another likely consequence of the planned family:
as having children comes to resemble a costly form of consumption,
fertility differentials, such as by income and social class, may be
expected to diminish or even reverse. Such trends can be detected
through social surveys (then still a novel research instrument) that
inquire about the number of children families want or expect.
The decades that followed brought demographic changes in the United
States that were no less marked and often not better anticipated
than was the baby boom itself. The population grew rapidly, from 170
million in 1957 to more than 300 million in 2007, but driven as much
by improvements in mortality and by net immigration (factors not
treated in Freedman’s essay) as by a high birth rate. Indeed, from
the peak of the baby boom, birth rates declined sharply. By the
1970s, US fertility was appreciably below replacement and, despite a
slow recovery afterward, remained there for three and a half
decades. But with a TFR of 2.10, American fertility in 2006 once
again attained, if only barely, replacement level.
Fertility differentials did narrow in the past half century, as
Freedman anticipated, but by no means disappeared. For example, TFRs
in the US in 2006 for non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks
were, respectively, 1.86 and 2.11. In contrast, the 2006 TFR for the
population of Hispanic origin was 2.96: Hispanics contributed almost
one-quarter of that year’s US births. And while in the 1950s
fertility could still be roughly equated with fertility of families,
as was the case in Freedman’s essay, doing so half a century later
became a poor approximation. Currently nearly two-fifths of American
births are to unmarried women, a proportion four times as high as in
1957. And population growth by migration, still dwarfed by natural
increase in the 1950s, came to rival the latter with annual net
immigration of some 1.4 million versus less than 1.7 million in
natural increase. As for the baby boom–generated population bulge,
its effects are now increasingly seen in the absolute and relative
numbers in the older age groups, decidedly more a problem than an
opportunity. By 2025, all those born in the 1950s and earlier will
be 65 or older. Over 2007–25 the US population aged 65 and older is
projected to grow by 65 percent, from 37.7 million to 62.1 million;
the rest of the population will grow by 8 percent.
Ronald Freedman was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1917. In his long
scientific career as founder of the Population Studies Center and as
Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan,
he helped to shape the field of demography by bringing a broad
sociological perspective to the study of fertility and family
planning. Ronald Freedman died 21 November 2007 in Ann Arbor, at the
age of 90.
Book Reviews
(offsite
link*)
- The
Global Family Planning Revolution: Three Decades of Population
Policies and Programs / Warren C. Robinson and John A. Ross
(eds.)
Reviewed by Gigi Santow
-
Transition and Challenge: China’s Population at the Beginning of the
21st Century / Zhongwei Zhao and Fei Guo (eds.)
Reviewed by Susan Short
-
Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 1900–2000 / Göran
Therborn
Reviewed by A. Dharmalingam
- The
Future of Marriage / David Blankenhorn
Reviewed by Andrew Cherlin
Short
Reviews (offsite
link*)
- Margins of
Error: A Study of Reliability in Survey Measurement / Duane F.
Alwin
- New
Developments in the Economics of Population Ageing /
John Creedy and Ross Guest (eds.)
-
Surrogate
Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction / Susan Markens
-
Disciplining Statistics: Demography and Vital Statistics in France
and England, 1830–1885 / Libby Schweber
-
Reproductive Health—The Missing Millennium Development Goal:
Poverty, Health, and Development in a Changing
World / Arlette Campbell White, Thomas W. Merrick, and Abdo S.
Yazbeck
-
Transcending Boundaries: Zhejiangcun: The Story of a Migrant Village
in Beijing / Xiang Biao
Documents
(offsite
link*)
- The US Council
of Economic Advisers on Health and the Demand for Health Care
Average per capita spending on health care in the United States
exceeded $7,000 in 2006, having grown almost threefold (in constant
dollars) since 1980. Counted on the national level, some 16 percent
of GDP was taken up by health care expenditures in 2006; in 1980 the
corresponding percentage was 9.1. While this level of spending on
health care is much higher than in other developed countries,
dissatisfaction with the institutions and arrangements through which
health care is financed is widespread. Some 16 percent of the
American population lacks health insurance. Health care reform is
proving to be a contentious issue in the run-up to the November
election and is likely to be a prominent item on the agenda of the
next president and Congress. The 2008 Annual Report of the US
Council of Economic Advisers (a 354-page document, formally an Annex
to the Economic Report of the President, Transmitted to the
Congress February 2008 [Washington, DC: US Government Printing
Office]) devotes Chapter 4 to the importance of health and health
care, providing some pertinent background to the current discussions
of needed reforms. An excerpt from this chapter, titled “Health and
the demand for health care,” is reproduced below. It discusses the
special nature of the demand for health care, enumerates the factors
other than health care expenditures that determine health (or lack
of it), notes the influences that affect health spending, and
provides a brief look at trends in health insurance coverage. It
also gives a summary account of trends in US life expectancy during
the twentieth century, and highlights estimates of life-years gained
in each decade following 1950 from reduced mortality from selected
causes.
Several factors, not least the clearly foreseeable trends of aging
of the US population, make it virtually certain that the already
high share of health care expenditures in the gross domestic
product, and within it the share of federal expenditures on health
care, will further increase, even under the assumption that
provisions by current programs continue essentially at their present
level. Sustaining the two major federal programs on health—Medicare
and Medicaid, which provide support primarily to the rapidly growing
old-age population—will necessitate some combination of major tax
increases, acceptance of growing government debt, curtailment of
non-health government expenditures, reduction of per capita health
entitlements, or imposition of regulations on prices and on allowed
health interventions, with possibly deleterious effects on the
quality of health care provided. A report on the long-term federal
budget outlook, issued in December 2007 by the Congressional Budget
Office, illustrates the magnitude of the problem. Current (2007)
federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid represents, respectively,
2.7 and 1.4 percent of GDP. CBO’s “extended baseline scenario,”
adhering closely to current law, projects that the GDP-share of
these expenditures will double by 2030, amounting to 5.6 percent and
2.5 percent, and will rise further by 2050 to 8.9 and 3.1 percent,
respectively. (The 2050 combined expenditures on the two health
programs would be roughly twice the projected outlay on Social
Security.) Such forecasts are largely ignored in the current debates
on health care reforms, even though they will impose severe
constraints on proposed extensions of the government’s role in
health care provision.
- The World
Health Organization on the Global Tobacco Epidemic
Nearly one-third of adults in the world are smokers. Cigarette
consumption per adult has been declining in the developed countries
but is rising (from a lower level) in developing countries. Combined
with population growth, what the World Health Organization calls
“the global tobacco epidemic” is still expanding apace and is
increasingly a developing-country phenomenon. Its health
implications are dire. Tobacco use is recognized as a major risk
factor in some cancers and in respiratory and cardiovascular
disease—making it, according to the WHO, the leading preventable
cause of death in the world. As of early 2008 152 countries were
parties to WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, committed
to imposing limits on advertising, putting health warnings on
cigarette packets, and protecting people against exposure to tobacco
smoke. The dimensions of the problem, with elaborate citations of
the latest medical and public health research, and outlines of a
proposed six-pronged anti-tobacco program (denoted by the acronym
MPOWER), are set out in WHO Report on the Global Tobacco
Epidemic, 2008: The MPOWER Package, issued in February 2008. The
initial section of this report, “The global tobacco crisis” (pp.
14–22), is reproduced below.
The figures presented on tobacco-related fatalities—approaching one
in ten deaths worldwide— are striking, even without the dramatizing
device (used in Figure 1) of cumulating total deaths over the years.
(For demographically attuned readers, the description is curiously
devoid of denominators. Nor does it make use of the burden of
disease concept popularized by WHO, which would quantify
person-years lost by premature mortality.) For promoting its product
in developing countries, especially to the young and to women, the
tobacco industry as a whole is portrayed by the report as a “disease
vector”; governments are also blamed, in more temperate language,
for spending only a tiny proportion of tobacco tax revenues on
preventive measures (though the taxes themselves are acknowledged to
be a significant deterrent to smoking). The full report is available
at
http://www.who.int/tobacco/mpower/en/index.html.
* Journal subscribers will be able to access a PDF
of the article online; nonsubscribers will be given access after paying
a fee.
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